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Live EQ

#41
James Simonson said:
Just crank the kick drum way up then wonder why the bass sounds like **** when you brighten it into a trebly mess.
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If I cranked the kick drum up at my church you wouldn't hear any bass. The high notes just do not cut through. I really don't know what else to do about that :\

I don't boost very much treble if any. Everything at 3k and above is usually left flat. I try mainly to boost the mids to bring out the fundamentals.
 
#42
Invalid Link Removed

This is part of a tutorial sequence on EQ and how to mix with it.I stumbled across it about a year ago.

There's examples (scroll down a bit) of some tracks being mixed, and when some EQ is provided which cuts different bits from a few instruments, the cuts reveal the other instruments more clearly. I think it's be helpful for anyone wanting to know where to start with live mixing.
 
#43
Bad attempt at humor because I understand what you're up against.

Maybe try cutting a little around 110 on the kick to open it up for the bass guitar. Try boosting around 2k on the bass.

If your bassist is using a lot of lows on the basses pre, then that can really make it tough.

Use your instincts and don't be afraid to turn the knobs to get it right for bass. Sometimes cutting the lows actually helps rather than boosting the bright. If you cut the lows, add a bit of volume.

Passive bass to d.i. can really shine in those moments.
 
#44
James Simonson said:
Bad attempt at humor because I understand what you're up against.

Maybe try cutting a little around 110 on the kick to open it up for the bass guitar. Try boosting around 2k on the bass.

If your bassist is using a lot of lows on the basses pre, then that can really make it tough.

Use your instincts and don't be afraid to turn the knobs to get it right for bass. Sometimes cutting the lows actually helps rather than boosting the bright. If you cut the lows, add a bit of volume.

Passive bass to d.i. can really shine in those moments.
Click to expand...
I'd kill for a passive bass for our church. I've been designing a nice Jazz Bass on Warmoth. If I can get the money together I'm gonna just build it and donate it to the church.
 
#46
KingRazor said:
Can't be anymore of a waste of time than the spreadsheets I've been making of intervals and scales...:ninja:
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2wcqq85.gif

(click for full size)

hope it's useful to somebody. i didn't want to try to guess at how high guitar and bass harmonics would go above the fundamental tone of frets. guitar and bass assume a 24 fret neck. mandolin assumes a 14 fret neck. harmonica is the full 16 hole harmonica, i'll note that in the next version. I need the correct highest note for 6 string bass, i just noticed.

plan on adding banjo, violin (same as mandolin, but different fb range), maybe some wind instruments or drums (if i can find definitive pitch ranges for various stuff). any other suggestions?
 
#47
also, concerning the vocal ranges, this is to be taken into account:

Wikipedia said:
While the exact number and definition of vocal registers is a controversial topic within the field of singing, the sciences identify only four registers: the whistle register, the falsetto register, the modal register, and the vocal fry register. Typically, only the usable range of the modal register, the register used in normal speech and most singing, is used when determining vocal range. However, there are some instances where other vocal registers are included.

Vocal range itself can not determine a singer's voice type. While each voice type does have a general vocal range associated with it, human singing voices may possess vocal ranges that encompass more than one voice type or are in between the typical ranges of two voice types. Therefore, voice teachers only use vocal range as one factor in classifying a singer's voice. More important than range in voice classification is...where the voice is most comfortable singing. For example, a female singer may have a vocal range that encompasses the high notes of a mezzo-soprano and the low notes of a soprano. A voice teacher would therefore look to see whether or not the singer were more comfortable singing up higher or singing lower. If the singer were more comfortable singing higher than the teacher would probably classify her as a soprano and if the singer were more comfortable singing lower than they would probably classify her as a mezzo-soprano.
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#48
bassk81976 said:
...plan on adding banjo, violin (same as mandolin, but different fb range), maybe some wind instruments or drums (if i can find definitive pitch ranges for various stuff). any other suggestions?[/QUOTE]

I posted some similar examples. You can take at least some of the other instruments off of those.

Nice job! See if it can be made sticky.

Suggestion: Add at least some frequencies (in Hz; vertical lines? ISO freq. centers?) & maybe label some more piano keys for the benefit of those who don't know them.
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#49
bassk81976 said:
not to be off my rocker, or push this thread off topic, but i don't see what's not to "trust" about wikipedia, with a vocal range list. What, do you not beleive that a soprano is really c4-c6?
...
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Not that at all, just that I know some people don't implicitly trust everything that they see in Wikipedia. There's an inherent problem with the authority of a source that basically any joker can update at will, rightly or wrongly. My personal BS Detector is pretty sensitive, & I like to think that I can spot errors. I wouldn't have offered it as a source if I didn't think it was at least pretty close.
 
#50
So I know this thread is starting to stray a bit from bass but I wondered if I could get some advice.

I've been struggling to make the vocals especially prominent in my mixing, as this is the desire of the band leader. The problem is, he likes the vocals LOUD. So loud in fact that they can really start to sound piercing. Our goal is to cap at about 95-96 decibals during youth services. The other night we hit 98 several times. That's just too loud.

So, obviously there's something else I could be doing to bring the vocals out more, otherwise I don't think the band leader would have had me crank the volume up on them so high otherwise.

I don't want the vocals to be loud or piercing but I need to know how to make them very full and very present. One thing I'm going to do is start putting the vocals more into the center speaker we have (right now we have a left, center, right configuration) so the band leader can hear the vocals better and get a better impression of how loud they are to the audience.

Any tips on what I can do EQ wise to help with this? I'm going to start with what I've already learned from this thread but any further advice would also be appreciated.
 
#52
general point - In the FOH rack, are you running any kind of speaker management system ? a Driverack or etc ? IME - shooting the room and getting it *normalized is step 1. Then worry about individual channel EQ's and MIC's - some common mic's are real hot at certain points - like 250 hz so you may get some offending bleed there.

As has been mentioned before - less EQ typically sounds more 'organic' and less 'Gary Numan' - neither is good or bad as long as the decision to go there or not is by design...

I like 80 as a hi pass in my system - that is going to vary system to system, room to room as the overall frequency response is unlikely to be flat. 80 works for me, maybe not so much for someone else... Mine is also fixed at 80 so it might be that I've learned to adapt overtime... ears, you gotta use ears, and adapt ...

Low end is a matter of design as much as anything else. Someone has to listen and decide - does the kick have the bottom or the BG or keys ... fit everything in as it seems appropriate. There is no 'right' only good or bad... I have to go do the google on slotting as I suspect this is what I'm describing...

Once you get past flat out wrong - there is an awful lot that is subjective...

*normalized - flat plus the engineer or producer's taste in EQ...
 
#53
4Mal said:
general point - In the FOH rack, are you running any kind of speaker management system ? a Driverack or etc ? IME - shooting the room and getting it *normalized is step 1. Then worry about individual channel EQ's and MIC's - some common mic's are real hot at certain points - like 250 hz so you may get some offending bleed there.

As has been mentioned before - less EQ typically sounds more 'organic' and less 'Gary Numan' - neither is good or bad as long as the decision to go there or not is by design...

I like 80 as a hi pass in my system - that is going to vary system to system, room to room as the overall frequency response is unlikely to be flat. 80 works for me, maybe not so much for someone else... Mine is also fixed at 80 so it might be that I've learned to adapt overtime... ears, you gotta use ears, and adapt ...

Low end is a matter of design as much as anything else. Someone has to listen and decide - does the kick have the bottom or the BG or keys ... fit everything in as it seems appropriate. There is no 'right' only good or bad... I have to go do the google on slotting as I suspect this is what I'm describing...

Once you get past flat out wrong - there is an awful lot that is subjective...

*normalized - flat plus the engineer or producer's taste in EQ...
Click to expand...

Commence thread resurrection!

I missed this post.

Our left and right main speakers are both powered and don't have any sort of management system.

We have a dual-band hardware 31-band GEQ, I think we have that hooked up to the center speaker, but I don't actually know that for sure...it could be for the monitor wedges.

The FOH board has 4 GEQs/PEQs that can be used for mains/aux sends. The left and right main speakers both have GEQs applied with the same settings used on both. Everything below 100Hz is rolled off and there are a few small dips and peaks in the higher frequencies. Our ex-sound lead did a "quick and dirty" EQ of the room when we moved in here. We don't really have the knowledge or equipment to really EQ the room properly, so we've left it as is.

I'd like to invest in some hardware to EQ the room with. Really all we need is a calibrated microphone, as the soundboard has built-in RTA software.

While I rarely have a chance to actually experiment with EQ because I'm usually busy just mixing, I have noticed a few things here and there.

For instance, right around 4KHz is the harshest, most irritating sound to my ears. So, cutting in that area has often helped "soften" things. I have a -9dB cut (with a very narrow Q) somewhere within the 2.5K to 5K range on several of our channel inputs. Mostly vocals and keys.

For the guitar players I let them worry about their own EQ and bypass their channel EQs on the board.

I have a high pass filter of at least 40Hz on every channel input. 40 for the kick, 60 for the bass, 80 for the keys and floor tom and over 100 for everything else (only 20 for the ipod though).

I've been using the rule of "cut narrow, boost wide" and I think that's working well. I also rarely boost by more than 2dB.

A few challenges I run into while mixing:

The senior pastor of my church likes things quiet. Very quiet. So when I mix for the weekend services I have to mix completely different than for youth services. It's a struggle to keep everything quiet, especially with over 80dB of stage noise (measured with an SPL meter at "A" weighting). I'm basically running everything as hot as I can without being told to turn down and being left with no room for "expression" (although I try to get it when I can)

The powered JBL speakers we are using as mains right now were really not meant to be used for that. They're travel speakers. But they're our only option right now. We have a sound budget of about $0 and it's going to stay that way probably until we're done with our building campaign (attempting to raise $125k and we're up to about $30k)

I'm still trying to learn as much about sound as I can. I enjoy it despite its challenges.
 
#55
I get daring with BVs. If you have one lead and four backing, I put a ridiculous HPF on all the backing; 3-400Hz. The backing still comes through nicely and thickens the sound, but you don't have five strong, similar fundamentals fighting for space in the lower end, making it muddy.

If more than one person is leading out of the five, then it gets trickier.

If you listen to any track with a backing vocal with the lead removed (karaoke or whatever), you'll find that the backing is very skinny indeed.

Just my £0.02. :)
 
#56
Jimbob Jones said:
I get daring with BVs. If you have one lead and four backing, I put a ridiculous HPF on all the backing; 3-400Hz. The backing still comes through nicely and thickens the sound, but you don't have five strong, similar fundamentals fighting for space in the lower end, making it muddy.

If more than one person is leading out of the five, then it gets trickier.

If you listen to any track with a backing vocal with the lead removed (karaoke or whatever), you'll find that the backing is very skinny indeed.

Just my £0.02. :)
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Interesting, I hadn't thought of that.

I'm still getting used to EQing everything in the band to fit with each other, instead of EQing so that each instrument/voice sounds good on its own.
 
#57
To hear vocals loud and clear , with a well tuned PA , with normal sounding singers who have OK mike handling technique, just put a HPF on the vocals and EQ other stuff 'away' from vocals like Guitards and keys. And put them louder.

If you want to limit your mix to 96 and have "peaks" to 98db , it's pretty much OK , music is Dynamics too , no big deal.
Put your DB meter to 'slow' or 'average' and use that reading instead of 'peaks'.
 
#58
fokof said:
To hear vocals loud and clear , with a well tuned PA , with normal sounding singers who have OK mike handling technique, just put a HPF on the vocals and EQ other stuff 'away' from vocals like Guitards and keys. And put them louder.

If you want to limit your mix to 96 and have "peaks" to 98db , it's pretty much OK , music is Dynamics too , no big deal.
Put your DB meter to 'slow' or 'average' and use that reading instead of 'peaks'.
Click to expand...

I high pass all of the vocals at about 200Hz. But I also like to add in some highs, especially on the lead vocals.

Two of the vocalists lead during different songs. The other three stay background, generally.

I often ignore the meter and just use my ears. If it sounds too loud to me, I turn it down.
 

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